[Sidenote:  Looking back]

After his speech was ended, and he retired with a friend into a convenient privacy, he looked upon his friend with a more than common cheerfulness, and spake to him to this purpose:  “I look back upon my late employment with some content to myself, and a great thankfulness to Almighty God, that he hath made me of a temper not apt to provoke the meanest of mankind, but rather to pass by infirmities, if noted; and in this employment I have had—­God knows—­many occasions to do both.  And when I consider, how many of a contrary temper are by sudden and small occasions transported and hurried by anger to commit such errors, as they in that passion could not foresee, and will in their more calm and deliberate thoughts upbraid, and require repentance:  and consider, that though repentance secures us from the punishment of any sin, yet how much more comfortable it is to be innocent than need pardon:  and consider, that errors against men, though pardoned both by God and them, do yet leave such anxious and upbraiding impressions in the memory, as abates of the offender’s content:—­when I consider all this, and that God hath of his goodness given me a temper that hath prevented me from running into such enormities, I remember my temper with joy and thankfulness.  And though I cannot say with David—­I wish I could,—­that therefore ‘his praise shall always be in my mouth;’ Psal. xxxiv. 1; yet I hope, that by his grace, and that grace seconded by my endeavours, it shall never be blotted out of my memory; and I now beseech Almighty God that it never may.”

[Sidenote:  Gilbert Sheldon]

And here I must look back, and mention one passage more in his Proctorship, which is, that Gilbert Sheldon, the late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, was this year sent to Trinity College in that University; and not long after his entrance there, a letter was sent after him from his godfather—­the father of our Proctor—­to let his son know it, and commend his godson to his acquaintance, and to more than a common care of his behaviour; which proved a pleasing injunction to our Proctor, who was so gladly obedient to his father’s desire, that he some few days after sent his servitor to intreat Mr. Sheldon to his chamber next morning.  But it seems Mr. Sheldon having—­like a young man as he was—­run into some such irregularity as made him conscious he had transgressed his statutes, did therefore apprehend the Proctor’s invitation as an introduction to punishment; the fear of which made his bed restless that night:  but, at their meeting the next morning, that fear vanished immediately by the Proctor’s cheerful countenance, and the freedom of their discourse of friends.  And let me tell my Reader, that this first meeting proved the beginning of as spiritual a friendship as human nature is capable of; of a friendship free from all self ends:  and it continued to be so, till death forced a separation of it on earth; but it is now reunited in Heaven.